Free Republic

Police have told residents in one of London’s most affluent neighbourhoods they should arm themselves with “keys and umbrellas” after a string of street robberies. Scotland Yard said a group of two to four hooded men in their twenties have been seen prowling Hampstead Garden Suburb in a dark car, ambushing women and stripping them of their jewellery as they step outside their homes. The enclave just north of Hampstead Heath, where detached mansions fetch upwards of £20 million, is home to many celebrities including TV presenters Jonathan Ross and Richard and Judy Madeley. Pc Edward Bromilow, ward officer in...

If you’re a casual football fan, there’s a chance you won’t be familiar with the 1983-84 season in Romania’s Divizia C, Serie VIII. It was so tight that in a 16-team league, with two points for a win, only two points separated second and 15th. Some teams avoided relegation on goal difference – and finished in the top half of the division. On the final day, the as-it-stands table probably exploded after 10 minutes. At least there was only one as-it-stands table. We’ll need at least two to make some kind of sense of this week’s matches at Euro 2016:...

Mr Abdallah said the weapon had "looked handmade" and a man who had been wrestling with the gunman continued even after seeing the gun. He said: "The man stepped back with the gun and fired it and then he fired a second shot, as he was firing he was looking down at the ground." "He was kicking her as she was lying on the floor", he said.

Some people live in the wrong country. What is Geoffrey Cowell doing in Britain? A cross-dressing flasher has admitted exposing his female underwear to young girls. But pensioner Geoffrey Cowell’s behaviour was “more odd than sinister”, a court was told [Monday]. The 67-year-old pleaded guilty to two charges of using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour. Two charges of outraging public decency were withdrawn. On May 27, Cowell approached two eight-year-old girls playing rounders at a Thornaby school and asked them if they were having fun and what were they doing. The girls ignored him and he lifted up...

Sadiq Khan, London’s first Muslim mayor, announced Monday that “body shaming” advertisements will no longer be allowed in London’s public transport. “As the father of two teenage girls, I am extremely concerned about this kind of advertising which can demean people, particularly women, and make them ashamed of their bodies. It is high time it came to an end,” Khan said. The mayor added, “Nobody should feel pressurised, while they travel on the Tube or bus, into unrealistic expectations surrounding their bodies and I want to send a clear message to the advertising industry about this.” Khan was not clear...

Why is America so alarmed by Brexit? Lest the reader be in doubt, remind yourself of this. Never before has a sitting US president visited a fellow democracy in a bid to sway an election. Nor, until now, have 13 former US secretaries of state and defence risked addressing a letter to a foreign electorate with the same motive. Ditto eight former Treasury secretaries and five former supreme commanders of NATO. Not only has the US establishment broken its non-interference rule over Brexit, it is stamping on its smithereens. If we did not know better, it might seem the UK...

"...leaving one ‘BLINDED IN ONE EYE’ and 4 others horrifically injured as they waited for a train. —- Young group were standing at Ockendon station, Essex, when attacked — Doused in corrosive liquid by group of Muslim assailants who then fled — One of the teenagers left blind in one eye while a second badly burned —Three others also hurt but released from hospital with minor injuries

This is Aimee Rouski, a 19-year-old from Liverpool, England, who has Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory disease that affects the digestive system. Crohn’s is an incurable disease which causes inflammation of the lining of any part of the gastrointestinal tract. It can cause abdominal pain, severe diarrhea, fatigue, weight loss, and malnutrition — which can become life-threatening. Many people with Crohn’s will have at least one surgery as part of treatment, either to widen a part of the intestine or to remove portions of the intestines or the colon and/or rectum. Rouski recently posted a few selfies with her ostomy...

The BBC has warned English football fans not to dress as crusaders when attending the Euro 2016 tournament this summer as they might cause offence to Muslims. The advice comes via their ‘iWonder’ website, aimed at a younger audience, which asks such pressing questions as “Was Shakespeare a feminist?” and “How green is my commute?” Posing the question: “Is it wrong to dress as a crusader for an England match?” the answer appears to be a resounding “yes”. “Crusaders were the perpetrators of violent attacks across Europe and the Middle East on Muslims, Jews and pagans,” the website intones, suggesting...

In his op-ed in The Washington Post, Chris Grayling, leader of the House of Commons, made the case for British withdrawal from the European Union -- in terms Americans can understand. Would you accept, Grayling asks, an American Union of North and South America, its parliament sitting in Panama, with power to impose laws on the United States, and a high court whose decisions overruled those of the U.S. Supreme Court? Would you accept an American Union that granted all the peoples of Central and South America and Mexico the right to move to, work in, and live in any...

The population of England is set surge by more than four million in the next decade as parts of the south prepare to see the number of inhabitants swell by up to a quarter, official projections show. New estimates, drawn up to help councils and the NHS plan ahead, expose the full impact of years of mass immigration on top of a revolution in life expectancy. Immigration is set to account for almost half of the expected population expansion, which would also official rank London as one of the world’s megacities – passing the 10 million mark - for the...

The job of a midwife is to care for women and their babies before, during and after birth, but the leader of British midwives group is pushing to add late-term abortion advocacy to midwivesÂ’ job descriptions. Cathy Warwick, the chief executive of the Royal College of Midwives, has been facing heavy backlash ever since she used her role to push for late-term abortions for any reason up to birth, LifeNews reported. Without consulting members, Warwick recently published a new RCM policy that supports abortion on demand, according to the UK Metro. She also got the midwives group involved in a...

The owner of an Indian restaurant was found guilty Monday of killing one of his customers — after he cut corners whipping up an order of chicken tikka masala. A jury in Teesside Crown Court in North Yorkshire, England, found 52-year-old Mohammed Zaman guilty of manslaughter and gross negligence because he switched out almond powder for a cheaper ground nut mix containing peanuts, according to the BBC.

The fabric at St Faith's Church in Bacton has been identified by experts as a piece of a 16th Century dress. An examination by Historic Royal Palaces curators has strengthened a theory it formed part of a court dress. The Queen is depicted in the Rainbow Portrait wearing a similar fabric, but no documentary evidence has been found to suggest the dress was worn by her. Historians believe the monarch could have gifted the garment to one of her servants, Blanche Parry. Dating back to the last decades of the 16th Century, the altar cloth that hung in a glass...

In response to Cameron calling Trump's suggestions that Muslims should be barred from the US "divisive, stupid, and wrong", Trump warned that maybe the two just wouldn't get along then. "Well number one I'm not stupid ok, I can tell you that right now. Just the opposite. Number two in terms of divisive, I don't think I'm a divisive person, I'm a unifier. Unlike our president now I'm a unifier... It looks like we're not going to have a good relationship. Who knows, I hope to have a good relationship with him but it sounds like he's not willing to...

The BBC’s religious output is too Christian, an internal review by the Corporation has concluded, opening the way for more programmes on other faiths. One Muslim leader suggested the review could lead to Friday prayers from a mosque being broadcast in the same way that Christian church services currently feature in the BBC’s schedules. The report is now being considered by Lord Hall, the director general, who could make changes to make religious output less “disproportionate”, the Sunday Times (£) reported. Ibrahim Mogra, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said the BBC could televise Friday prayers from a mosque and...

A braided head of hair found buried beneath a medieval abbey in England has given up some of its secrets, thanks to a scientist's curiosity about the relic, which he first saw when he was a schoolboy. Jamie Cameron, an archaeological research assistant at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, first visited Romsey Abbey, near the city of Southampton, on a school field trip when he was 7 years old. Cameron said he became curious about the abbey's display of a brightly colored and braided head of hair, which had been found in a lead casket buried beneath...

Student activists are calling on universities to install sanitary towel bins in men’s toilets so that biologically female transgender students who use them do not face discrimination. The Mail on Sunday has found that equality rights campaigners at three leading universities have called for the changes – resulting in family groups branding the move ‘madness’. They include Southampton Student Union, which has drawn up a ‘Trans Inclusion Policy’, in which ‘trans’ is defined as a ‘wide umbrella term, covering those who transcend traditional boundaries of gender and sex, those who are gender variant, and those whose gender identity does not...

With regard to its designs for our nation, debasement has been the name of the game for the political left for a long time. While volumes could be written on the moral debasement alone catalyzed by the left, America’s standing in the world, our economy, our educational system, our worldview and collective self-image, among many other things, have been targets for incremental debasement by the left. When liberals began targeting the sexual attitudes of our population through mass media and junk science such as Alfred Kinsey’s perverted sex studies, suddenly the worst thing one could be was a prude, and...

Unless you live under a rock in a very shady part of the forest or in England or Wales, you have no doubt heard of the peculiar domestic arrangements of the world’s most famous gay marriage. The British musician Elton John and his husband David Furnish, who married last December after several years in a civil partnership, have been in tabloid headlines around the world after revelations that Mr Furnish has been involved in trysts with other men. Except, however, in England and Wales, where publication of anything about the sordid affair has been gagged.